– revealing details about the Iron Age on the Åland Islands

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With the site report written, one might wonder, what’s next? Is that all? What will happen with the grand longhouse verified during the archaeological investigations in 2014? Or what about the project itself, how will that proceed? Despite my silence on this blog-platform, I can assure you that much more has happened and much more has been achieved than a mere site-report.

For example, soon (hopefully?), there will be a peer-reviewed article published in the journal titled Finskt Museum that is published in Helsinki by the Finnish Antiquarian Society. In that article, some remarkable finds from Kvarnbohall discovered during metal-detector survey are being discussed in length and contextualized. Among other things, I argue for something that I would like to call transformative aesthetics, indicating that there was an Ålandic “market” whose preferences shaped the objects that reach us from the archaeological contexts. For the past two month, I have been working on another article in which I explore the longhouse in Kvarnbo in comparison to the full data set of coeval houses on Åland as well as in the framework of Iron Age settlement development in general.

I have also presented Kvarnbohall in various connections. I especially remember meeting with the couple of art students from France when body-language by necessity became an inevitable complement to my PowerPoint presentation 😀 But also, the cheerful group of amateur archaeologists from Sweden at the site in Kvarnbo just the other day. Most of all, however, and for a long time to come, I will remain nostalgic in regard to an hour long presentation I had at the Nordic SF & Fantasy Convention, Archipelagon, visited by the George R.R. Martin himself!!! This was, by far, the coolest opportunity I have ever had to present my research (and meeting George R.R. Martin, a man behind A Song of Ice and Fire, was really a dream for a fantasy literature addict as I am – his signature has already become a show off to every visitor entering my house :D).

However, most importantly, I have worked a lot in order to ensure the continuation of the project. And, yes, great things are soon to happen in regard to Kvarnbohall 🙂 and, yes, very soon I will tell more about it all.